Favourite comic book artists...

[fajrdrako]

I wanted to make a list of my twelve favourite comic book artists. Illustrators are my favourite artists; I love the way they twist storytelling and visual communication together. These artists are gods in my pantheon.

And in listing these twelve, I am frustrated by all the artists I am not listing, whom I also love so much. Carlos Pacheco, Michael Zulli, Paul Gulacy, Marc Silvestri, Rick Leonardi, Whilce Portacio, Jackson Guice, Mike Kaluta, Jim Sterenko, Marshall Rogers, P. Craig Russell, Terry Moore, Michael Turner, Mike Deodato, Jaime Hernandez, Scott McCloud, Ryoichi Ikegami, and so many others. Much as I respect their contribution to the comic book industry, my favourites are not the famous greats like Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, or Steve Ditko. There are some artists who are fan favourites whose work I intensely dislike. So it goes.

My twelve favourite comic book artists, listed alphabetically:

1. Chris Bachalo - I now associate Chris Bachalo with Death and his work on Death: The High Cost of Living, but it was his work on Generation X that I came to love his work.
   
2. Paul Chadwick - Famous for the comic Concrete, which had a wonderful combination of realism and fantasy.
   
3. Jim Cheung - I used to like his style on X-Force, but it's his work on Young Avengers that really won my heart.
   
4. Jae Lee - Unlike all the other artists listed here, there's no one comic I remember him for. Namor, perhaps. His art has a strength that sticks with me, regardless of the story it's illustrating.
   
5. Jim Lee - It's his work on <ahref="http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/magnetoiconic3.jpg">X-Men that made me love his work. No one draws Magneto so well. What is it about artists name Lee?
   
6. Rob Liefeld - An artist ridiculed (probably rightly so) for his bizarre use of anatomy - I remember a figure once whose codpiece was bigger than his head, and yes, I laughed. But illustration isn't about literal depiction, and it was Liefeld's dynamic, expressive style which revived my interest in comics at a time when I needed it. I remember searching for back issues of his New Mutants and X-Force work with the passion of the newly converted.
   
7. Moebius (Jean Giraud) - I have read very few comics drawn by Moebius, and his work at Marvel wasn't, to my eyes, his most impressive. At his best, Moebius is breathtaking, with a brilliant sense of visual science fiction.
   
8. John Romita Jr. - At first I just thought of him as "John Romita Sr's son" - and then became captivated by his style, especially with Wolverine and Cable.
   
9. Tim Sale - When I first saw his work on the Gambit minseries he did with writer Jeph Loeb, I didn't like it. Then I read their Batman stories - briliant.
   
10. Bill Sienkiewicz - Whose work on The New Mutants set new standards for the industry.
    
11. Charles Vess - Who drew my second-favourite Sandman story, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and had a lovely issue of Books of Magic with Tim Hunter. He seems to be doing more fantasy illustration than comic books these days; I love it all, but miss his comic book work.
    
12. Barry Windsor-Smith - Ah: the best of the best. I became his devotee with his work on COnan the Barbarian; I went on reading that comic for years after he left, wondering where the magic had gone. He draws wonderful pieces in a style reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelites: his magic has energy.